PSLV C-35, carrying India’s SCATSAT-1 meant for ocean and weather studies and seven other satellites including from the US and Canada, has successfully lifted off from the spaceport. In a first, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’s PSLV C-35 rocket on Monday launched a total of eight satellites, for into two orbits.

The 371 kg-weighing SCATSAT-1, a satellite for weather-related studies was placed in the polar sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of 730 km some 17 minutes after the rocket took off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.

About two hours later, the rocket placed two satellites from educational institutions (PISAT and PRATHAM), three commercial payloads from Algeria (ALSAT-1B, 2B and 1N) and one each for Canada (NLS-19) and the United States (Pathfinder-1).

Announcing the successful launch of all the satellites from the Mission Control Centre, ISRO chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said the Monday launch marked a “landmark day” in the history of ISRO.

The rocket was re-ignited twice during its flight to place the set of satellites in a different orbit. Due to the re-ignition, the Monday’s launch is by far the longest PSLV launch by ISRO.

Though ISRO has launched several PSLV rockets in the past, this launch is “the first mission of PSLV in which it will be launching its payloads into two different orbits,” ISRO said.
SCATSAT-1 with a life of five years, would provide weather forecasting services through the generation of wind vector products.

The 10 kg-weighing PRATHAM by IIT Bombay intends to estimate the total electron count with a resolution of 1km x 1km location grid and PISAT (5.25 kg) from PES University in Bengaluru intends to explore remote sensing applications.